Decoding trends in the summer schedule 2024

All aviation geeks eagerly look forward to the change in airline schedules that happen seasonally in the last week of March (start of the summer schedule) and the last week of October (start of the winter schedule). This is usually a good time to take a one time snapshot of the market and read into trends. The regulator (DGCA) also releases the approved domestic schedules for carriers at the start of the schedule. Of course actual deployment remains dynamic as airlines keep changing their schedules, base availability of fleet, market opportunities and competitive heat. For instance just in this winter schedule, Indigo mounted a significantly higher number of flights in November compared to February when they had to deal with incremental groundings of Pratt and Whitney powered aircraft only for them to significantly restore capacity in March. All airlines continue to add capacity sequentially (including wet leases) and hence the end of the schedule period reads very differently from the start. In addition, there is high seasonality in some markets (e.g. hill station destinations like Leh, Srinagar, Bagdogra) and also different travel peaks (most long weekend holidays post a spurt in April are back loaded into the second half). All this means that airlines need to keep changing their schedules to best meet the need for profitable deployment of their aircraft capacity.

With that preamble, let’s move onto the analysis of the summer schedule available for sale – first by looking at the top 20 airports in terms of daily departures

Rank	Airport	Total Departures	Indigo	Air India group	% Indigo
1	Delhi	472	217	202	46%
2	Mumbai	325	153	131	47%
3	Bengaluru	319	180	106	56%
4	Hyderabad	219	152	51	69%
5	Kolkata	176	109	47	62%
6	Chennai	152	114	28	75%
	Top 6 Metros	1663	925	565	56%
7	Ahmedabad	99	68	16	69%
8	Pune	88	53	20	60%
9	Guwahati	55	28	19	51%
10	Lucknow	53	37	13	70%
11	Jaipur	53	38	15	72%
	Cochin	52	28	22	54%
12	Goa Dabolim	51	28	23	55%
14	Srinagar	45	23	11	51%
15	Bhubaneswar	41	25	14	61%
16	Indore	41	37	4	90%
17	Goa Mopa	39	16	7	41%
18	Patna	35	26	5	74%
19	Chandigarh	34	27	7	79%
20	Varanasi	30	18	8	60%
	Top 20 total	2379	1377	749	58%

As can be seen, the 20 airports are pretty much the same as when we looked at in February – however, ranks have changed with Srinagar climbing up the list along with Guwahati. Some trends seen are captured below

1.      Mumbai has lost 20 daily departures (or 40 flights a day) driven by the government mandate to decongest the airport. Indigo has cut more than 8 departures and the Air India group (including Vistara) has cut 8 relative to early February before the cuts were enforced. The gap between Mumbai and Bengaluru has narrowed to 6 daily departures which will likely get breached soon. However, the capacity gap between the 2 remains a little larger as Mumbai has very minimal low capacity turboprop operations compared to Bangalore. Correcting for that, the gap is about 18 A320 sized departures or 6 aircraft worth of capacity.

2.      Indigo continues to add capacity – in the top 6 metros, it operated 904 daily departures in November 23, 892 departures in Feb 24 and is now offering 925 daily departures, despite its challenges of grounding a large part of its fleet and its cutbacks in Mumbai. A bulk of these additions have gone to Bengaluru and Hyderabad (both up 13 daily departures relative to Feb 24). There have also been additions in Kolkata, Chennai and Srinagar.

3.      Air India group continues to add capacity at Delhi (through Air India), Bengaluru (through Vistara), Hyderabad and Kolkata (through Air India express). With the further expansion of the fleet of both Air India and Air India express it will be interesting to watch the evolving network of the group. Vistara is now the clear #3 by departures in the Bengaluru market, well ahead of Akasa. The combined Air India group is slowly building a more formidable presence at Bengaluru – its declared third hub.

4.      While Goa has seen a small drop in departures relative to Winter, it is clear that this is no longer a seasonal destination and indeed Goa as a combined market is in the top 8 of the country and both Goa airports in the top 20.

5.      Goa Mopa (with a strong Akasa presence), Delhi and Mumbai are the few airports in the top 20 where Indigo is less than 50% of departures. Indore remains the most concentrated market where Indigo accounts for 90% of departures and amongst the Metros, Chennai is Indigo’s strongest share at 75% of all departures.

6.      The gap between Kolkata and Chennai has widened from approx 8 daily departures in Feb 24 to more than 20 departures in May 24. This is largely on account of the expansion of Vistara and Air India express in Kolkata compared to Chennai (Indigo has added frequencies at both airports).

Looking at the top 20 routes by way of daily departures

Rank	Top Routes	Total	Indigo	Air India Group	Indigo %
1	Delhi Mumbai	55	20	29	36%
2	Delhi Bengaluru	38	15	20	39%
3	Mumbai Bengaluru	35	15	14	43%
4	Delhi Hyderabad	25	11	11	44%
5	Delhi Srinagar	24	9	9	38%
6	Delhi Pune	24	9	12	38%
7	Delhi Kolkata	22	11	9	50%
8	Bengaluru Kolkata	20	11	7	55%
8	Mumbai Hyderabad	20	10	9	50%
8	Delhi Ahmedabad	20	9	8	45%
11	Delhi Chennai	19	10	8	53%
11	Bengaluru Hyderabad	19	10	8	53%
13	Mumbai Chennai	18	10	7	56%
13	Mumbai Ahmedabad	18	9	6	50%
15	Mumbai Kolkata	17	8	6	47%
16	Bengaluru Pune	16	8	4	50%
17	Bengaluru Kochi	15	7	7	47%
18	Delhi Guwahati	14	5	8	36%
18	Delhi Goa Dabolim	14	6	8	43%
19	Delhi Lucknow	13	6	7	46%
20	Delhi Leh	12	6	3	50%
20	Mumbai Goa Dabolim	12	5	7	42%
20	Bengaluru Chennai	12	7	4	58%
20	Hyderabad Chennai	12	9	2	75%

1.  While there was a battle between Mumbai and Delhi for the 2^nd spot (both connecting to Bengaluru), with the capacity cuts at Mumbai, Delhi Bengaluru vaults to the clear #2 spot.

2.      Delhi Srinagar enters the top 5 and Delhi Leh the top 20 routes in this summer schedule.

3.      Bengaluru Kolkata enters the top 10 with the recent addition of 3 daily flights by Vistara. In contrast, Mumbai Chennai drops out of the top 10, being most impacted by the cuts at Mumbai.

4.      Barring Hyderabad-Chennai, Indigo is not the monopolistic player in any of these city pairs – which shows the importance of these routes to the Air India group where its network is largely concentrated and also the width of the Indigo network beyond these top 20 city pairs

5.      The busiest Intra-state city pair continues to be Kolkata Bagdogra with 10 daily departures though in terms of capacity, Chennai Coimbatore is now a busier corridor with 8 daily departures, many on high capacity 321 neo aircraft. Srinagar Jammu also has an impressive 7 daily services

6.      Apart from the inter metro routes, there are very few routes where Indigo operates and is not a capacity or frequency leader. Some exceptions in this regard are routes like Bengaluru Varanasi, Bengaluru Ranchi, Bengaluru Bagdogra, Mumbai Srinagar, Delhi Goa Mopa.

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